Originally posted by victormeldrew The issue is that buyers don't know how to use ebay auctions properly. Rather than deciding what their (actual) maximum is, putting that in and then waiting with fingers crossed, they hunch over their keyboards putting in a series of hopeful bids one by one in an attempt to 'WIN' (ebay's term) the auction like winning a race.
part of that is strategy.
Often with a desirable item you're bidding against lots of other people that may well have a similar upper limit to you.
This can mean that an item that you wanted to spend say $50 on goes for $52, and you kick yourself thinking that you'd have happily paid an extra $2 for it.
By putting in an under-max bid early, as the end time approaches you can gauge interest and see if you are outbid.
Then you can enter in bids closer to your maximum as the end nears.
My usual method is to within the last few seconds throw in a bid at my maximum, but with a very odd figure, like $52.83
the theory there being that since ebay only allows bids in dollar increments, if they have entered $53 it wont accept it, and they'll have to enter in $53.83 or higher. Since the bid has been in the last seconds the intention is that they will fumble the keys, or just be slow in entering the new figure and wont have a chance to click "bid" by auction end.
I've managed a few bargains in the past in that way.